Ye hooded witches, baleful shapes that moan,
Quench your fantastic lanterns and be still;
For now the moon through heaven sails alone,
Shedding her peaceful rays from hill to hill.
The faun from out his dim and secret place
Draws nigh the darkling pool and from his dream
Half-wakens, seeing there his sylvan face
Reflected, and the wistful eyes that gleam.

To his cold lips he sets the pipe to blow
Some drowsy note that charms the listening air:
The dryads from their trees come down and creep
Near to his side; monotonous and low,

Numb, stiff, broken by no sleep,
I keep night watch. Looking for
signs to quiet fear, I creep
closer to his bed and hear
his breath come and go, holding
my own as if my own were
all I paid. Nothing I bring,
say, or do has meaning here.

Outside, ice crusts on river
and pond; wild hare come to my
door pacified by torture.
No less ignorant than they
of what grips and why, I am
moved to prayer, the quaint gestures
which ennoble beyond shame
only the mute listener.

No one hears. A dry wind shifts

There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father the thunder
your mother the rain

In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,

your true parents disappear
when the curtain covers your door.
We are the others,
the ones from under the lake
who stand silently beside your bed

Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.

When the golden day is done,
Through the closing portal,
Child and garden, Flower and sun,
Vanish all things mortal.
II
As the blinding shadows fall
As the rays diminish,
Under evening's cloak they all
Roll away and vanish.
III
Garden darkened, daisy shut,
Child in bed, they slumber--
Glow-worm in the hallway rut,
Mice among the lumber.
IV
In the darkness houses shine,
Parents move the candles;
Till on all the night divine
Turns the bedroom handles.
V
Till at last the day begins

Swiftly walk o'er the western wave,
   Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,--
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear
Which make thee terrible and dear,--
   Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
   Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out.
Then wander o'er city and sea and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand--
   Come, long-sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,

A near horizon whose sharp jags
Cut brutally into a sky
Of leaden heaviness, and crags
Of houses lift their masonry
Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie
And snort, outlined against the gray
Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh
The goaded city gives, not day
Nor night can ease her heart, her anguished labours stay.

Below, straight streets, monotonous,
From north and south, from east and west,
Stretch glittering; and luminous
Above, one tower tops the rest
And holds aloft man's constant quest:

My mind matches this understand land.
Outdoors the pencilled tree, the wind-carved drift,
Indoors the constant fire, the careful thrift
Are facts that I accept and understand.

I have brought in red berries and green boughs-
Berries of black alder, boughs of pine.
They and the sunlight on them, both are mine.
I need no florist flowers in my house.


Having lived here the years that are my best,
I call it home. I am content to stay.
I have no bird's desire to fly away.
I envy neither north, east, south, nor west.

Conde had come with us all the way --
   Eight hundred miles -- but the fortnight's rest
Made him fresh as a youngster, the sturdy bay!
   And Lurline was looking her very best.

Weary and footsore, the cattle strayed
   'Mid the silvery saltbush well content;
Where the creeks lay cool 'neath the gidya's shade
   The stock-horses clustered, travel-spent.

In the bright spring morning we left them all --
   Camp, and cattle, and white, and black --

SHE looked on me with sadder eyes than Death,
And, moving through the large, autumnal trees,
Failed like a phantom on the bitter breath
Of midnight; and the unillumined seas
Roared in the darkness out of centuries.

Never on earth, or in the holy sky,
Beyond the limits of the secret ring
God walls about His Kingdom jealously,
Has ever been a fairer, sweeter thing
Than she: more fair than all imagining.

Never again! though I should waste the hours